Episode 181 – Cycles of Compleation

This time around, we’ve got even more listener mail! Reading the mail leads to some interesting conversations. We discussed cheating a little bit, complete with judge-type commentary by Bryan from the Avant-Card Show, who happens to be a Level 2 Judge. There’s a little bit of speculation about Innistrad (completely baseless, the best kind!). And just in case we’re right, you heard it here first! Innistrad’s going to deal with things dying and possibly life totals. HA!
We’ve also got another listener-supplied Mad Lib! This one is from Tosus, our old buddy out in Germany, and it’s a good one.

Then we finally get to talk about the cycles in New Phyrexia, after a brief discussion of what cycles are in the first place. Then we realized…there really aren’t that many cycles in the set. The Praetors, the Chancellors, the Exarchs, the Shrines, and the Souleaters. I think that might be it. But we went into detail for each cycle, so it works out well. Let us know if you have any thoughts on the cycles of New Phyrexia.

I know this sounds harsh, but to be honest, the judge had no choice but to DQ the player. Even if he wasn’t aware he was cheating, the problem is at that point he’s already compromised the integrity of the tournament, even if it is an enforcement-light one as the prereleases tend to be. The big problem is, say that this player gets his DQ downgraded to a game loss. Then the person next to him thinks, “Great. I’ll just use the promo Wurmcoil Engine in my deck and claim I didn’t know any better. And if the judge doesn’t believe me, I’ll start to cry, and everything will be fine.” Though we may not like it, and though it may suck for the player in question, there really is no other option but to issue the DQ.
On the other hand, had I been the Judge, I think I would have encouraged the player to stick around, maybe play with some of the other players who drop from the tournament or sign up for another flight (there’s nothing that says he can’t work hi sob story on the TO to get in to a second flight at cost).